Keeping the lights on part 1: How do we make more energy?

08/08/23 • 36 min

The world is in a state of flux when it comes to energy production. Australian coal is being bought up by China as fast as it can be mined, Europe is coming to terms with Russian gas supplies being a bargaining chip in international politics, and the US is grappling with how to produce more energy whilst meeting green targets and keeping people in mining areas employed.

It’s a tough balancing act. So how can countries realistically become more energy independent in a sustainable way with the tech that’s viable today? This is the first of a two part special. Next time we’ll be looking at how to make the most of the energy we already have.

We start off by meeting Doug Kothe, a Nuclear Scientist who, until recently, headed up the Exascale computing team at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US. He's hugely excited by recent developments in the field, but is also a realist who understands that Fusion energy is still a way off being commercially viable and scaleable.

So what are the alternatives? Professor Patricia Thornley from Aston University is Director of the Energy & Bioproducts Research Institute. They look at the energy potential of waste biomass - sewage and agricultural by-products - to provide not only electricity, but also materials such as plastics, and fuels such as gasoline, diesel and even jet fuel and hydrogen. Their research shows enormous promise - up to 45% of the UK's energy needs could be provided in a carbon-neutral or even net negative way simply by processing agri-waste. In many parts of the world, close to 100% is achievable.

But what about countries where land is at a premium? There's alternatives here, too. Carnegie Clean Energy is an Australian-based engineering firm who are perfecting their CETO wave-generation technology. They use submerged bouys pulling on cords to generate energy in an environmentally non-destructive way. As Carnegie CEO Jonathan Fievez explains, the difference in their technology is that the generators can pull on their own cords to raise, lower or angle themselves. That lets them both generate more electricity, and protect themselves from the bad weather and turbulent seas which have traditionally made the tech difficult to implement commercially.

They do this via an ingenious AI tool called reinforcement learning, whereby an AI learns to control the bouys by being rewarded for the amount of energy they generate. Testing is currently ongoing, but early results suggest a 20-40% performance improvement with less wear and tear, which could be a lifeline for remote and island communities currently relying on diesel generators.

Driving this AI technology is Hewlett Packard Enterprise Labs, who have been working in partnership with Carnegie. Christian Temporale and Maria Ridruejo have been implementing the project for HPE, and are excited by the progress that's been made. They believe that machine learning techniques such as this could make significant improvements in other technologies, such as 'smart' wind turbines, and developing better forms of solar panels.

Previous Episode

Can technology help to rebuild after disasters?

2022 saw 421 registered natural disasters worldwide, including floods, drought, famine and earthquakes. It also saw new or escalating conflicts in Sudan, Syria and Ukraine. Thousands of NGOs, activists and charity groups do what they can to help those in need, whilst Governments and research groups try to come up with better ways of predicting, mitigating and avoiding disasters.

But you may be surprised to know there's a whole heap of ways that tech can help with rebuilding and prevention efforts. In this episode, we look at how grassroots groups and major organizations work together to leverage lateral thinking, agile mindsets, and technological expertise to mitigate the effects of societal upheaval, and even help in rebuilding efforts.

This episode was inspired by meeting Valerie Kuzmenko, a tech executive from Donetsk, who had to flee when the area became the epicentre of the original Ukraine war in 2014. In 2022, she found herself in Kyiv at the start of the invasion, and had to flee to London with her family and nothing more than a suitcase. Since recording this episode, she's found work as the Chief Marketing Officer at ScaleLabTech.

Using tech to rebuild society is a field which draws together large and small organisations in partnership. At the larger end of the scale are organizations like Airbel labs. They are the research arm of the International Rescue Committee. Atish Gonsalves heads up their EdTech wing. Airbel partner with a number of large organizations such as Whatsapp to provide educational solutions in areas where schooling is difficult, and work hard to provide not only resources for children who would otherwise be out of education for long periods, but also to help teachers continue to operate through tough times and disaster recovery.

Likewise, Hewlett Packard Enterprise use their technological expertise to provide solutions and assistance on some of the most pressing humanitarian issues, for example working with the American Red Cross to use AI to help route and maintain supplies of donated blood. However, HPE Head of Global Social Impact and Deputy Director of the HPE Foundation Fred Tan explains, it's by helping provide solutions and partnering with smaller, grassroots organisations that can encourage new ways of thinking and problem solving which can make a truly global difference, as well as encouraging HPE to think about its own operations.

And on the ground, small organizations are doing truly remarkable work with technology. We're joined by Oksana Simnova and Vatalii Lopushanskyi of RebuildUA and UADamage respectively. These two groups grew out of very different fields - RebuildUA was in Argitech working on drone mapping Ukraine's enormous farms, and UADamage grew out of a team working on Neural Network and AI applications. They now work closely together, using drones and satellite images to map out damage to buildings in Ukraine, and then logging and assessing the damage caused and matching it against pre-war imagery to assess the need for repair. They are hopeful that their findings will help rebuild Ukraine, but also be useful in mine clearing activities in future war zones.

Next Episode

Keeping the lights on part 2: How do we optimize our energy usage?

The world’s energy supply is in a state of flux. Australian coal is being bought up by China faster than it can be mined, Europe is coming to terms with Russian gas being shut off, and the US is grappling with how to produce more energy whilst meeting green targets and keeping people in mining areas employed.
It’s a tough balancing act. In the last episode we looked at how to produce more energy. But how do we make the most of the energy we already have? This time, we’ll be talking to experts and organizations using tech to reduce our consumption and get us all a little greener without resorting to drastic societal change - and save our organizations money at the same time. The focus, for this episode, is on how we transform the IT industry, and how we transform domestic usage.
We start off by meeting HPE's John Frey, Chief Technologist for Sustainable Transformation. He explains that, in terms of the IT industry, there's sometimes a disconnect or lack of awareness from customers around the power-saving technologies that are put into the devices we use, from laptops to servers. There's a habit in large organizations of overriding or deleting manufacturer-built controls which could save tens of thousands of kilowatt-hours per year, and the first step in transforming our energy usage as an industry is simply to turn them back on. He also argues that the way we code could be a game changer - with more efficient languages and processes drastically reducing the amount of compute required to run them - by up to 90% in some cases.
Joe Baguely agrees. He's the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Europe, the Middle Eastern Africa at VMware, a provider of (among other things) virtualisation solutions (in a siilar manner to HPE Greenlake) which allow for far more data and functionality to be run on less hardware, drastically increasing energy efficiency. VMWare is also leading the charge in local power generation and sourcing their electricity from renewable or green suppliers.
Joe and John also argue that it's imperative that IT departments actually understand the cost of their energy usage, which has traditionally been the responsibility of buildings management or operations teams. Only with the advent of Cloud computing have IT departments become responsible for their own budgets, and that has drastically improved awareness of just how energy-intensive our organizations' IT infrastructure can be.
Finally, on the domestic side, we meet Devrim Celal, CEO of KrakenFlex, part of the Octopus Energy Group. Devrim points out that in a world of renewables, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make energy when we want it, so a new era of smart co-operation is needed to balance the grid and avoid wasting energy – or causing shortages at peak times. They are pioneering smart technology which pairs our energy-intensive devices, generators, and storage facilities (think electric vehicles and wind turbines) to ensure that the hungriest consumers aren’t using electricity at the most inefficient time, spreading the load through the day by telling the EV, for example, when to charge.

They are also pioneering ‘gamifying’ our energy use, to encourage consumers to care about how much they use, and their role in the wider, national picture.